Background blacks finished. On to the figure.
One of the more challenging parts of designing a new creature is finding new places to put the stitches. It’s obvious that the Frankensteins are chemists not surgeons. And it’s also pretty obvious that they have a thing for weird ugly scars. It takes effort to be this sloppy.
Sometimes the initial sketch takes the longest amount of time. In the case of this piece the inking was the most time consuming – lots of black. I suppose someday, when I’m in a hurry, I’ll resort to putting down outlines for where I want black and then filling in the darkness in Photoshop. I’ll be sad when that happens. I like having physical drawings that are finished in their own right.
This is my latest contribution to the A Patchwork of Flesh illustration blog. Or it will be once it’s finished. I did this sketch during a particularly dead day at the Day Job a month or so ago. Dead days are rare things there these days.
Coop at Patchwork asks people to send in 2.5″ x 3.5″ illustrations. That’s a great size to work at when you want to get a piece done quickly but it doesn’t leave a lot of room to play around. So I decided to do a larger illustration, cut it up and then send him the pieces. That seemed like a good Frankensteinian idea. I’ve been waiting to start posting this series until Coop got all the pieces in the mail. That happened today so …
I did a new illustration for A Patchwork of Flesh and Coop has begun posting it. I’ll be doing a follow up here once he get all the parts up.
And with that I vanish into silence again. I’m spending the weekend at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival. If you happen to be there too and you know what I look like, say hi!
Here is the second of the three Dr. Bland strips I did for a possible postcard marketing campaign. I don’t remember if the Boss liked them or not. If he did he also thought that they weren’t what he wanted in a marketing campaign.
How did it get to be the first so quickly? And why do my stats tell me that more people visit this journal when I’m not posting than when I am? Ah, the mysteries of the life. I wish I could say that I was back to regular daily posting but it wouldn’t be the truth. I’ve got three days of posting starting today and then it will be back to oblivion. It’s probably going to be that way for the rest of the year.
I found this strip, along with 2 others, when we did a major clean of the office at the Day Job back in August. It’s from the great unfinished comic strip project that I worked on back in 2002 (?) as part of a possible marketing program for the Day Job. First I’d sketched out an 8 page minicomic. With all the distractions at work the turning of those sketches into complete comic pages happened far more slowly than the boss wanted to wait for so he asked if I could come up with some shorter strips that we could use as part of our monthly postcard mailings. Dr. Bland was to be our villain for the minicomic so I gave him a try as the star of his own series. Villains are rather more fun to write than heroes. For the short term at least.
My little sister is getting married today. All the fractured family will be up in Anchorage to celebrate. Should be fun.
I’m afraid the inactivity on this blog will be continuing until October 1st. The day jobs for both Nizzibet and myself are keeping us busy and tired. What energy I’ve got is focused on making some illustration deadlines for a new RPG manual. I will have one post set for the 19th but otherwise expect more silence.
Before I move on to other subjects I want to give raves to David Grilla. He’s the other illustrator on Terrors from Beyond. His work rocks. I’m honored to share the pages of the book with him.
The Complete Annotated Oz Squad is now available from Tumble Tap Press and Amazon. I haven’t seen a physical copy yet myself but it should collect all ten issues of the series as well as Little Oz Squad and the Millenium Special. Plus Steve’s annotations and a variety of pin-ups. If you’ve hesitated to buy either of the previous collections then you might want to grab this one.
The cover on that is also the last work I’ll have on the series for the foreseeable future. Sean Casey has stepped up to be the regular artist for Oz Squad. The poor bastard shares his name with a major league baseball player so don’t try to google him. It looks like Steve, Oz Squad’s creator and writer, is posting some of Sean’s Oz character sketches. Sean’s online gallery can be found here. I wish him luck. He’s got a lively style and I can see him doing a good job.
Steve stuck by me as the artist for the Oz Squad revival for a long time. I really appreciate that. At a certain point that commitment had to be a roadblock more than a benefit. Due to the current nature of my environments I just can’t get the necessary long form concentration to draw a comic. Or write a story. Any letter that runs longer than an paragraph takes hours. The pages for the first issues have been sitting around begging me to work on them for literally years now. I’d manage to work on a panel or two, sometimes a page or two and then I’d be frustrated that work I was doing didn’t match the work that had already been done. So then I’d do some more RPG illustrations. I’d get them done and I’d get paid and they’d get printed.
I’ve been a fan of the series since it came out. I’d wanted to a comic continuation of the original Oz books myself so when I was offered the chance to illustrate an Oz Squad revival I was delighted. Steve’s stories surprise me. They’re both more whimsical and more brutal than anything I’d be likely to write myself. He’s a fan and a reader of the Oz books and children’s literature in general. His scripts are smart and funny and demented. So I not only wish Sean and Steve luck with the revival, I also wish them success. I want to read more Oz Squad!
Check out Steve Alhquist’s weblog for future news and developments. I’ll try to update my fan pages to reflect the changes sometime in the next few weeks.
And finally, I’m going to be taking a little break from posting here. I’m not exactly sure how long but I’ll be back by September 1st at the latest. I’ve got book illustration deadlines looming. I’m got some art in mind for posting but I’m a little behind in getting it all scanned.
Cheers!
